Sacrifice
by ardavenport
Summary: Professor Snape comes to Dumbledore's office and learns a little bit more about the dying wizards plans to defeat Lord Voldemort.


**SACRIFICE**

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by ardavenport

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Severus Snape strolled down a seventh floor corridor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"Toffee eclairs."

The lone, decorative gargoyle guardian leapt aside, the wall behind it sliding open, revealing the revolving spiral staircase up to the Headmaster's office. At the top, Snape knocked at the door.

Then knocked again.

"A moment," Dumbledore's voice answered from within. Annoyed, Snape waited. And paced, head down, stringy black hair hanging down around his face. More than a few moments later, the door opened and he strode into the circular tower office, past the humming and whirring displays of magical curios. The phoenix, Dumbledore's familiar on his perch by the door, ruffled his scarlet feathers, but otherwise ignored him.

Seated behind the Headmaster's desk, Albus Dumbledore looked up from a litter of spell craft spread out before him. Snape removed from an inner pocket of his black robe a small stoppered potion bottle. Dumbledore's grave expression dissolved into a sigh.

"Ah, forgive me; I forgot," the Headmaster admitted, slumping back in the thronelike chair and laying his wand on the desk with his cursed and blackened hand. Frowning, Snape came around, put down the bottle and without asking permission, pushed back the sleeve of Dumbledore's midnight blue robe to examine the wound while keeping careful not to touch it. Above the boundary that Snape had come to reinforce, the pale skin was as healthy-looking as possible for a man of Dumbledore's advanced years. but below it, the flesh was black and withered. The skeletal hand still worked, though it pained Dumbledore somewhat, and being his wand hand, he still used it. But it would never heal and the curse would eventually escape Snape's wards of containment and kill its victim.

Satisfied that there were no corrupting veins of the curse spreading the arm (yet), Snape began his incantations while Dumbledore dutifully drank down the potion. He had complained that it tasted like a vanilla-flavored troll sewer, but never hesitated to drink it. And now, he looked vulnerable, his head back, eyes closed, long silvery-white hair and beard standing out against his dark blue robe and cap; he looked old and sallow, his half-moon glasses crooked.

Muttering the last of the reinforcement spell, Snape lowered his wand and stepped back. There was no change in the shriveled, blackened skin, but that was to be expected. Dumbledore flexed the hand and declared that it always hurt less after Snape bolstered his counter-curse. Color and energy seemed to return to his body and he straightened his glasses.

Snape accepted the other man's thanks with a nod. His black eyes flicked toward the desk.

"I see you've been busy."

The Headmaster raised his brows at the work spread out before him and Snape thought for a moment that he would be excused. But a whim seemed to strike the senior wizard and the withered, blackened hand gestured toward the chair facing the desk.

"Working on my will, actually. I'm nearly finished. You are welcome to observe, especially since you will be somewhat involved."

Snape's back straightened and he almost snapped a refusal at such a casual reference to Dumbledore's request to kill him before the curse in his hand or Draco Malfoy or Voldemort's Death Eaters could. The ease and serenity with which he accepted his own death made Snape recoil. When facing death, Snape knew he would fight to escape, to cheat it with every bit of strength he had.

Glancing again toward the cluttered desk and the chance that Dumbledore might reveal more of his plans, he pulled out the chair and sat down opposite the other man who carefully added ingredients into a standard size caldron placed over a small flame on the desk.

Angry to be so casually used and manipulated, Snape could not deny Dumbledore's cool practicality when he reflected on it later. It would bring about a quick end to the curse that would inevitably and painfully blacken and shrivel his whole body, burning him slowly from the inside out. And it would spare Draco Malfoy, who would inevitably fail to kill Dumbledore while also saving Snape himself, granting him the older wizard's blessing to kill him, and allowing him to complete the unbreakable oath that bound him to fulfil Draco's task.

This part of the plan was as merciless as any devised by the Dark Lord. Snape could not help but admire it.

sniff sniff

Snape's well-trained nose caught familiar scents of potion ingredients, powdered bone and graveyard dirt, dragon liver and mint. A pink mist drifted up from the small caldron as Dumbledore then stirred the concoction with what looked like a gryphon feather. The mist turned to black as well as the contents of the caldron after he poured a thick red liquid from a small bowl into it.

sniff, sniff

Snape knew the difference between salamander and dragon blood and this was neither of those.

Dumbledore had a bandage wrapped around his uninjured hand.

Alarmed, he sat forward, but one quickly raised warning finger from Dumbledore stopped him from making a huge blunder. Magic performed by a wizard of Dumbledore's stature was not to be interrupted, no matter how dark it looked.

Long minutes passed as he kept stirring and the black potion thickened and acquired a rainbow sheen. The aroma shifted from bone to ash with a short whiff of the mint before settling into a strong scent of iron and ash. Then after the level of the potion dropped noticeably, Dumbledore added another ingredient, a silvery strand of thought extracted from his temple, and deposited it into the caldron with his wand. He kept stirring, keeping a steady swirl in the thickened liquid that did not vary.

Snape watched, fascinated by Dumbledore's subtle and precise expertise, creating an apparent memory charm that was beyond anything he had ever done. No action was wasted, every motion of the wand had purpose. This intricate spell was made even more amazing since Dumbledore was working with a cursed hand.

The final surprise came when Dumbledore put in one last ingredient. A golden snitch. The shiny bauble slid into the potion without a trace of any splash. The flame under the caldron reduced to barely an ember.

The feather kept stirring and a golden aura surrounded the caldron as Dumbledore's wand passed over it. Snape was quite certain that silent incantations went with it, but he could hardly ever recall a time when Dumbledore voiced a spell.

The glow grew bright. And then faded. Only after it was completely gone did Dumbledore lower his wand. He put the feather aside on a cloth on the desk. Then he took a pair of silver tongs, fished out the snitch and held it as the potion smoothly fell away from it and back into the caldron. He laid it on a pad of folded black silk before him. Then, apparently quite pleased with the result, he finally looked back at Snape as if expecting applause. When asked, he confirmed that it had been a memory charm.

"My own variation of the portrait spell that all Hogwarts Headmasters are invested with upon ascending to the position."

Some of the portraits of former headmasters on the office walls, none of them feigning sleep or disinterest anymore, confirmed this and congratulated Dumbledore for his superb execution.

"You will, of course, be so invested when Voldemort appoints you to the position. After I am gone."

"I don't want it," Snape snarled back immediately. There were darker possibilities behind Dumbledore's casual references to his own demise. Any man who could so calmly sacrifice his own life for a cause, would just as easily sacrifice others as well. Snape knew he could be just as disposable in the older wizard's plans, especially if his prize pupil, Harry Potter, was. But . . . . Snape himself had privately vowed to do whatever it took to destroy the murderer of Lilly Potter . . . Lilly Evans. But he planned to live long enough to witness that destruction. And if death came for him before then, he would not go quietly.

"Acting as your spy at Hogwarts would hardly qualify me as a real Headmaster."

Unsurprising to him, some of the portraits agreed, though the one of Phineas Nigellus Black loudly countered with praise for Snape's noble sacrifice. An incinerating spell crossed the potion-master's mind, but he did not reach for his wand.

"If Voldemort seizes power at the Ministry, he will be too busy reshaping the world to his liking to notice if I am observing all Hogwarts' traditions."

Dumbledore shrugged, accepting his declaration.

"So, you wish to leave a message." Snape eyed the golden snitch, gleaming on its little bed of black silk.

"Yes."

"For Potter." That was fairly obvious since this was the quidditch ball most associated with the boy and his position on the Gryffindor House team. "Beyond what you have assigned me to tell him, that he must allow the Dark Lord himself to kill him?"

"Yes."

"And it was not something that you could just . . . write down?"

"No. Any items I might leave for those who must fight on after me will be heavily scrutinized by the Ministry, and possibly Lord Voldemort himself, before being passed on to their intended recipients. This message is only for Harry. It must only be revealed, by me, at the right time, under the right circumstances."

Dumbledore sighed.

"There are many possible outcomes. Not all of them good. This message must be . . . versatile enough to cover them all."

"Before I inform him of his true place in all this?" Snape promped.

"After, I think. It will only be revealed when his task is complete. When the sacrifice is made."

Snape's brow rose. "Since his task is to die, one wonders when he'll have the time for any messages."

"Oh, there are more possibilities than you might imagine beyond life, Severus." Dumbledore's enigmatic smile told him that he would get no more information on the subject.

Snape frowned, his lip curling up in a sneer. "Please, don't tell me that you plan to contrive to have Harry Potter's ghost running loose in this castle."

That got a quick laugh from the older wizard. "Oh, that would be torture for you, I think. But, no. The choice to linger in this world is always up to the individual. And between you and me, Severus, Harry Potter does not strike me as the haunting type, no matter the circumstances of his death."

The reminder of Harry's expected end quelled the humor in the room.

Snape's eyes stayed on the snitch as if they could bore into its secrets. "And you are sure that this message will not be discovered?"

"Quite sure. The barriers to any discovery that this is anything other than an ordinary snitch are quite impregnable. If I do say so myself."

Snape's dark eyes looked up into Dumbledore's clear blue ones and he nodded his respect. Dumbledore's confidence in his spell and his considerable skill was irritating, but absolutely justified.

"So, after Potter has . . . sacrificed himself, he will somehow receive this message?"

"Yes. I expect so."

Snape saw the golden gleam reflected in his superior's blue eyes. If it had been any other wizard who told him such a thing, he would have dismissed it, but Dumbledore . . . could he send a message beyond death? And what could a miserable, mediocre wizard like Harry Potter do to the Dark Lord alive, let alone dead?

No. It would not be Harry Potter who brought down Voldemort. Never Harry. It was his mother, Lilly who was responsible for Voldemort's first demise when she protected her son. The whole wizarding world hailed Harry as the hero, but it was Lilly's noble sacrifice, a mother throwing her body between death and her son, that had brought down the Dark Lord.

"And you think Potter is capable of such a sacrifice," he stated. His father, James, had been quite inadequate to achieve such a heroic act. It should have been his body that deflected Voldemort's curse to defend his family. But all he did was uselessly die, leaving his wife alone and undefended.

Dumbledore reached out and held up the snitch in his uninjured hand and he smiled at his work. He spoke as if he could read Snape's thoughts.

"Yes. Because no matter how much of James you see in the boy, he is still Lilly Potter's son."

Snape's vision blurred and he bowed his head, his throat tight. Dumbledore said nothing, seeming to understand and fury burned in him. His love for Lilly was private, not something to be shared. He felt violated by that sympathy, but he could do nothing about it. He had sworn himself to Dumbledore, body and soul, years ago; he would never break that oath, because it was also an oath he had made to Lilly, to see her death avenged.

Anger and grief formed into a solid mass of determination in his chest. If Harry Potter was to die, then it would be as the instrument of his mother's devotion, power and pure strength that would finally vanquish Voldemort. Dumbledore's next words sealed that resolution in him.

"You have only to look into his eyes, Severus, to see his mother in him."

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 ******* END *******

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 **Disclaimer:** All characters and situations belong to JKR; I'm just playing in her sandbox.


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